PRODIGAL: The Journey Home (Pt 3.)

Old and well-worn stories are often the best.  They don’t require a lot of “set-up.” In fact, most people know the stories so well that it becomes a sort of “fill-in-the-blank” communication.  You don’t really retell the narrative as much as you guide listeners or readers to tell it back to you---thereby involving them in the narrative that you are attempting to share.  The story of the prodigal son IS that story.

A simple story line:

• A man has two sons
• The younger asks the father for his share of the estate
• The father concedes
• The son takes the money and squanders it in a far off land
• Now, in desperate straits, the “prodigal” hires on feeding pigs
• While doing so he concludes that even his father’s servants are better off
• He goes home expecting chastisement and punishment (and ready to accept it)
• When he arrives he gets not punishment but reinstated as an heir.

SO MUCH good stuff in the details of this story to grasp:

It is important that the man has two sons and the younger is “the prodigal” because it would have been commonplace for the elder brother to be the primary heir—yet this is not his story (at least not yet).

It also seems odd that the father acquiesces to his younger sons request—rabbinical teachings are clear that this is a fool’s play.

Understand that the son is not squandering HIS OWN money—but his father’s money that would have eventually come to him in some form and amount.

It is at this point that the son becomes “prodigal.” He extravagantly wastes his inheritance (it is also an important side note to understand, legally, what one has to do to receive an inheritance---CLUE—NOTHING…somebody must love you enough to give it to you) on things and people he assumed would increase his quality of life.

Once the son becomes the prodigal he has no way forward or no way back, and no visible means of support—so he literally “forces himself” onto a local pig farmer, who takes pity on him and hires him to slop the hogs (PLEASE NOTE that all of the “cast members” in the narrative and listening to Jesus tell the story are Jews…for Jews this is ROCK BOTTOM…slopping unclean swine).

The son “comes to himself” (reasons within himself)…comes to understand his own situation...and humbly decides that he will throw himself on the mercies of the father and he will return home to become a slave (again…probably NOT the most realistic of scenarios—pride is both a wonderful and terrible thing).

While he is still on his way home the father runs out to meet him and, literally, “drapes himself on him” to welcome him home.  He gives him a robe, a ring, and sandals for his feet (all which have meaning in the ancient world—but I will let you look that up yourself---trust me—it IS important in the scope of the story). They kill the “fatted calf” (which is a special calf that they have been taking care of to use for a special situation—some NT scholars speculate that it was a calf being kept aside to be sacrificed on the altar for a Jewish ceremony—if that is the case it adds another layer and dimension to the story).

There is a HUGE celebration because the son that was lost has been found…he has come home!!

What a GREAT story…it is where the story should have ended (and if it did there would STILL be much to talk about).  However, it is NOT the end of the story…but maybe it should have been?

We cannot get so lost in the fine details of this story and MISS the BIG PICTURE.  It is a story about grace. But then again, whether we know it or not, every story about being a prodigal is a story of grace. It is a story about unmet expectations...the son could not find what he was looking for somewhere else (perhaps he DID find it, let’s just say he couldn’t sustain it)—life in another place or time is rarely what we have dreamed that it could be.

The BEST unmet expectations are those where grace abounds when there shouldn’t be any—a father who should have shunned and punished instead goes out of his way to rejoice, a son who extravagantly wastes his life in search for something that he can no sustain, a story of restoration and inheritance, when a life of servitude should have been acceptable…it IS the story of the “prodigal son!”  It is HIS story, it is our story, it is MY story…we are ALL “prodigals” because we have “extravagantly wasted” what God has entrusted us with (in ALL areas of our lives)—and for that we deserve to be disowned, and denied, but we are not…because that is what happens when God shows up.

I believe, help me in my unbelief.